Rebuilding hopes after human tragedy
On Monday, Turkey's privatization chief Ugur Bayar was working on the sale of Tupras, the state owned refinery company. A few days earlier Salomon Smith Barney had won the privatization mandate as consultant to the government. Tupras is Turkey's biggest company with a stock market valuation of $6.4 billion.
But the next day, Tuesday August 17, Tupras's Izmit refinery was ablaze and Bayar was in Adapazari digging for the bodies of his relatives trapped under the rubble of a terrible earthquake.
"I dug them out with my own hands," he told Euromoney a week later. "If I hadn't gone they would probably they would still be under there." Bayar returned to Ankara after burying six relatives.
The damage to the Izmit refinery - $7 million's worth of petroleum stored in tanks burned and one cooling tower fell on the refining units - when it might resume operation is not yet known. The bigger question is whether there will be any investment appetite (Bayar was considering a public offering of 15% to 20% of equity) for an installation which lies on land which has always been prone to quakes.